BiggerPockets

First off I'll start with my disclaimer:

This is MY version of a "Do it yourself" yellow letter. I know there are other ways to do it and companies that you can pay that will do it for you, blah, blah, blah. I'm not claiming this to be the best or the only way, etc. My goal is to describe as detailed as I can how I created my own letter and to show you how to do the same for yourself.

The reason I made my own was because I don't like the idea of doing things EXACTLY like everyone else...if we all did that then sellers nationwide would receive the exact same letter which to me makes no sense at all. Sellers that have already seen the letter your sending don't want to see it again. Be creative and capture their attention. Whatever you do, don't copy someone else word for word, if you do your letter has a good chance of going into the trash can with the rest of the junk mail.

Anyway, here is what I used to make my letter:

• The Print Shop 22
(this is a program that I use to make business cards, flyers, banners, t-shirt designs, logos, labels, etc.)

• Yellow note pad's with standard 8 1/2" x 11" lined paper

The other items are pretty obvious: Printer, ink, your mailing list, computer, envelopes, stamps, etc.

Before you open up the program to begin putting your letter together your going to want to do a google search for a hand written font, I use "Brian Scratch" but there are lots of others out there. Next, you'll want to put a letter together on a sheet of paper or on Word if you haven't done so already.

Ok, onto the letter

1. Once you have The Print Shop loaded onto your PC you will open up to the "Project Picker" and select BLANK PAGES, then pick the "tall" setting which allows you to print on the 8 1/2" x 11" paper

2. The next thing your going to do is to click on the left side of the page where it says "Text Tools", then click on "Insert Text Box". Resize the text box so that it takes up as much space as ONE line on a sheet of paper, change the font and text size at the top of the screen and start typing your letter.



3. The only way for this to work properly is to create a "Text Box" for EVERY sentence in your letter. Don't worry about lining them up perfectly at this time, we'll do that before we print it. See Image of "Text Boxes"





4. If you haven't finished your letter, do that before moving on…just make sure that EVERY sentence is in it's own "text box" so that we can move it up, down or side to side as needed. Be sure to SAVE your work every time you make a change so you don't loose it if the power goes out.

5. Ok, now that your letter is all typed up your going to want to print a test page and see how far off you are from the lines. I usually print onto a blank sheet of paper then put a piece of the yellow paper over it, hold it up to the light and see how far off you are (no need to waste a yellow piece).

6. Before you start moving the "text boxes" where they need to go, click on the "Arrange" tab, then click "add guide", then "vertical" . The idea here is to move the guide line into place where it can be used like the red margin line on the yellow paper. If you want, you can also add a horizontal line and put it where the first line of the yellow paper is suppose to be. See Image.



7. On to the fun part. Now that you know where your lines need to be, click on the first box with at the top of the page. Click the box ONE time so that it is selected. Now, with the ARROW keys, move the box up or down, side to side as needed. As you can see, the box moves in very small increments so lining everything up is pretty simple.


8. You'll have to print at least a few pages before you get everything where it needs to be. If you've printed a few test pages and think everything looks good, put in a sheet of the yellow paper and print one last test page. If it looks good, save it and then you'll be ready for the Mail Merge feature, which is also built into The Print Shop.

As you can see, this is not a perfect science because everyone should have their own letter. If you dig deep enough you'll find old posts of mine where I was trying to find someone to answer this question…the end result was that nobody could answer me with a simple way to "do it myself", so I just made my own. The cool part is that once you've successfully put your letter together it will be easy to make changes to it and test different letters until you find which one works best for you.

The bottom line is that you need to get your phone to ring and direct mailing is a great way to do that. I hope this post is helpful. Feel free to post questions to anything that is not clearly laid out or hard to understand. I can make another post on how to use the Mail Merge function that is built into The Print Shop if anyone is interested, just let me know.

Thanks for reading and God Bless.

Jeff

Jeff,

Sounds like you do a good job of explaining in detail what you do; got my vote. Unfortunately, your pictures aren't showing up in your post the way you intended (or at least as I expected). Also, you are using an outside image storage site, and the pictures stored there tend to go away - just check through some older threads that had photos from outside web sites in the post.

My suggestions: re-post with two corrections.

First, upload the pictures to BP in a gallery and use those pictures in the re-post.

Second, rather than use the "url" tag to delimit the link, use the "img" tag to delimit the link. This will embed the actual image onto the web browser rather than just a link that needs to be clicked to see it.

I have posted on how to do the upload of an image, and Jon has a post on the tagging; both of which are in this thread below:
http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/25/topics/45114-how-to-post-a-picture-

And I bet that will get everybody to see what you actually mean as they read along.

Yeah, the "how to post pictures" question is pretty common; I think Josh should make that thread a sticky under the site questions - but that's Josh's call.

Ok, lets try that again....

First off I'll start with my disclaimer:

This is MY version of a "Do it yourself" yellow letter. I know there are other ways to do it and companies that you can pay that will do it for you, blah, blah, blah. I'm not claiming this to be the best or the only way, etc. My goal is to describe as detailed as I can how I created my own letter and to show you how to do the same for yourself.

The reason I made my own was because I don't like the idea of doing things EXACTLY like everyone else...if we all did that then sellers nationwide would receive the exact same letter which to me makes no sense at all. Sellers that have already seen the letter your sending don't want to see it again. Be creative and capture their attention. Whatever you do, don't copy someone else word for word, if you do your letter has a good chance of going into the trash can with the rest of the junk mail.

Anyway, here is what I used to make my letter:

• The Print Shop 22
(this is a program that I use to make business cards, flyers, banners, t-shirt designs, logos, labels, etc.)

• Yellow note pad's with standard 8 1/2" x 11" lined paper

The other items are pretty obvious: Printer, ink, your mailing list, computer, envelopes, stamps, etc.

Before you open up the program to begin putting your letter together your going to want to do a google search for a hand written font, I use "Brian Scratch" but there are lots of others out there. Next, you'll want to put a letter together on a sheet of paper or on Word if you haven't done so already.

Ok, onto the letter

1. Once you have The Print Shop loaded onto your PC you will open up to the "Project Picker" and select BLANK PAGES, then pick the "tall" setting which allows you to print on the 8 1/2" x 11" paper

2. The next thing your going to do is to click on the left side of the page where it says "Text Tools", then click on "Insert Text Box". Resize the text box so that it takes up as much space as ONE line on a sheet of paper, change the font and text size at the top of the screen and start typing your letter.

[img]http://www.biggerpockets.com/user_photos/0007/6823/YellowLetter1_thumb.jpg[img]

3. The only way for this to work properly is to create a "Text Box" for EVERY sentence in your letter. Don't worry about lining them up perfectly at this time, we'll do that before we print it. See Image of "Text Boxes"

[img]http://www.biggerpockets.com/user_photos/0007/6827/YellowLetter2_thumb.jpg[img]

4. If you haven't finished your letter, do that before moving on…just make sure that EVERY sentence is in it's own "text box" so that we can move it up, down or side to side as needed. Be sure to SAVE your work every time you make a change so you don't loose it if the power goes out.

5. Ok, now that your letter is all typed up your going to want to print a test page and see how far off you are from the lines. I usually print onto a blank sheet of paper then put a piece of the yellow paper over it, hold it up to the light and see how far off you are (no need to waste a yellow piece).

6. Before you start moving the "text boxes" where they need to go, click on the "Arrange" tab, then click "add guide", then "vertical" . The idea here is to move the guide line into place where it can be used like the red margin line on the yellow paper. If you want, you can also add a horizontal line and put it where the first line of the yellow paper is suppose to be. See Image.

[img]http://www.biggerpockets.com/user_photos/0007/6831/YellowLetter3_thumb.jpg[img]

7. On to the fun part. Now that you know where your lines need to be, click on the first box with at the top of the page. Click the box ONE time so that it is selected. Now, with the ARROW keys, move the box up or down, side to side as needed. As you can see, the box moves in very small increments so lining everything up is pretty simple.

8. You'll have to print at least a few pages before you get everything where it needs to be. If you've printed a few test pages and think everything looks good, put in a sheet of the yellow paper and print one last test page. If it looks good, save it and then you'll be ready for the Mail Merge feature, which is also built into The Print Shop.

As you can see, this is not a perfect science because everyone should have their own letter. If you dig deep enough you'll find old posts of mine where I was trying to find someone to answer this question…the end result was that nobody could answer me with a simple way to "do it myself", so I just made my own. The cool part is that once you've successfully put your letter together it will be easy to make changes to it and test different letters until you find which one works best for you.

Here is what it should look like when your done:

[img]http://www.biggerpockets.com/user_photos/0007/6835/YellowLetter4_thumb.jpg[img]

The bottom line is that you need to get your phone to ring and direct mailing is a great way to do that. I hope this post is helpful. Feel free to post questions to anything that is not clearly laid out or hard to understand. I can make another post on how to use the Mail Merge function that is built into The Print Shop if anyone is interested, just let me know.

Thanks for reading and God Bless.

Jeff

PS: Always add a PS to your letter.

[img]http://www.biggerpockets.com/user_photos/0007/6839/YellowLetter5_thumb.jpg[img]

PPS: If these images don't load I'm not quite sure what the deal is!

Originally posted by Jeff And Cheray Warner

5. I usually print onto a blank sheet of paper then put a piece of the yellow paper over it, hold it up to the light and see how far off you are (no need to waste a yellow piece).

Are you referring to a lined piece of paper?

Here we go again. The reason I left ReiClub was because this guys smart ass "I'm the SHIT" attitude got on my last nerve. You see, he doesn't like that you are giving out information that will most likely cause people to not use his yellow letter service. I for one will NEVER use your service Michael, simply because, you are a prick.

sorry everyone. I ususally do not take that line but my blood is boiling.

You need to have a closing image tag [/img]

so your a smart ass and a now a bad ass. go back to the other site.

Originally posted by Caleb Whitney

Originally posted by Jeff And Cheray Warner

5. I usually print onto a blank sheet of paper then put a piece of the yellow paper over it, hold it up to the light and see how far off you are (no need to waste a yellow piece).

Are you referring to a lined piece of paper?

Print a test page on a blank sheet of paper, then hold up the lined yellow paper behind the test page, and hold it up to the light. This will allow you to see how far off you are without wasting a sheet of the yellow paper...just my way of being cheap. :D

Jeff

Originally posted by Caleb Whitney

Ok, so I was under the impression that this "tutorial" was going to show me how to actually print the lines onto the blank yellow paper. So what you do is purchase lined yellow paper.

Caleb, where do you find blank yellow paper that is the same weight and texture as the legal pads? The only blank yellow paper I could find is the same weight as blank white paper.

You can always just write your message on lined yellow paper and scan that in. Then print it on your own paper, but then you lose the personalization that this method provides.